Reactivating multiple deactivated plugins in multiple sub-sites

This is the second time it’s happened – I update a number of plugins and many hours later I notice that the activated plugins on my sites have been deactivated. These are the site-activated plugins, not the network-activated ones.

I have a multisite with about 15 sub-sites, so going on to the individual sites reactivating the applicable plugins is still a reasonable solution to the problem. But there must be an easier and quicker way to resolve this, if it happened again.

Can I simply restore a backup of the /wp-contents/plugins folder? Does updating plugins also change things in the database (I don’t think so, but don’t know for sure), in which case I will have to restore that, too (?).

Thoughts and experiences shared appreciated from everyone.